Challenging board games which require mathematical skill have been popular in the United States and other countries for many years. It is generally the purpose of these games to provide a challenge to the player which will test mathematical and reasoning skills wherein blocking and sequencing plays are used. A number of mathematical board games which provide limited testing of mathematical skills, reasoning skills and which have educational, as well as entertainment value, have been known in the past.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,565,374 to Pak discloses a mathematical game wherein contiguous sequences of numbered tiles are formed by blindly drawing tiles from a bag, shielding them from the opponent, and placing these tiles--distinguishable from the opponent's tiles by color--on the playing surface to form a sum which is a multiple of 10. Duplicate numerals are allowed on the board which make tracing, and thus, strategizing difficult. The purpose of this game is to outscore the opponent by forming defined sequences of numbered tiles whose sum is greater than a predetermined number. No points, however, may be scored by virtue of a sequence consisting of tiles of two different players.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,460,835 to Crans shows a game of similar construction where ranks and files are used to form sequences of numbered tiles which have again been blindly drawn from a bag. The tiles are shielded from the opponent, and one player scores along ranks only, while the other is allowed to score along files only. The purpose of this game is to form sequences of tiles which sum as close as possible to a single, predetermined number (175 in the preferred embodiment of the game).
U.S. Pat. No. 5,120,226 to Tsai shows a simple mathematical teaching aid which essentially is an array of ranks and files which accept numbered cubes used to form products of positive integers. An integral part of this teaching aid is a multiplication table which slides under the ranks and files for checking the accuracy of the multiplication.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,545,101 to Fike shows a mathematical game composed of ranks and files of integers in random order. This game requires an instructor, and can be played by several players, each with his own game board. The instructor calls out an arithmetic problem and each student marks what he believes to be the correct answer on his board. The first student to correctly mark one full row or one full column is the winner of the game.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,659,851 to Lang discloses an elementary mathematics/tic-tac-toe game involving a rectangular array of ranks and files.
While the prior art board games provide entertainment, education and support the application of play-by-play, limited tactics, the prior art fails to disclose a pure game of skill (as opposed to chance) which supports attacking and enticing the opponent with board plays without the limitation of luck-of-the draw and guessing which tiles your opponent has. The prior art also fails to disclose a board game which encourages player positioning (strategy) before employing scoring methods (tactics). The prior art also fails to disclose a game board which contains a scoring apparatus integral with the playing surface of the game board to eliminate the need for pencil and paper. Consequently, there is a need for a board game which provides a sufficient number of playing combinations, not easily memorized, which result in scoring points. Moreover, there is a need for a board game which provides for an easy reconstruction of the sequence and placement of tile moves by simple examination of the positions of the game tiles.